To Joseph Hooker   25 December 1866

Christmasday,

18661

 

I am sorry, dear Dr Hooker, that you taxed your department so heavily in freight for the Willows & Succulents you so kindly sent by mail steamer[.]2 I must not induce you to make again such sacrifices, but rather risk the sendings by the clippers, which arrive usually in about 80 days.3

My Garden assistant unpacked the consignment and reports thereon4 - Dracaena Draco is growing famously.5 Will we have here an [Orotama] tree6 after thousand years? or less. I find the Dracaenaceous plant of rapid growth & the magnificent palmlike NZ species I use in masses to decorate my pine forest, as it were with tropical features. I have abolished Dracaenopis7 & Charlwoodia & Calodracon as genera, and distinguish Dracaena & Cordyline by the structure of albumen & size of Embryo. Thus Cordyline has two sections, the species with uniovulate fruit-cells = Eucordyline & those with many ovules = Charlwoodia.8

The enclosed is a list of Orchids sent to you by this mail through the agency of Mess. Rob Gower & Coy of Marseilles. I took great pains to procure so extensive a collection of these pretty little things & I shall about as many more kinds to send when the stem[s] of the later flowering species have fully died down in the pots9

 
 

Calodracon

Charlwoodia

Cordyline

Dracaena Draco

Dracaenopis

Eucordyline

1
MS annotations: by D. Oliver?Alsomitra and J. Hooker Ansd [Feby] 22/67. [Letter not found.]
2
editorial addition.
3
See J Hooker to M, 19 October 1866. The Mail Steamer route involved mail crossing the desert by rail between the Mediterranean and Red Sea, with some being sent by rail to either Trieste or Marseilles, and the remainder taking slightly longer by sea from Southampton; the clippers sailed the much longer route via Cape of Good Hope.
4
Report not found.
5
See J. Hooker to M, 1 March 1866.
6
Orotava? Large specimens of the Dragon tree grow at La Oratava, Teneriffe. A reputed ancient specimen was destroyed in a storm in March 1867; see Gray (1868), who commented ‘the age of 6000 years which has been assigned to it by some of the “most sober naturalists” may not be very greaty exaggerated’.
7
Dracaenopsis?
8

See B66.12.04, pp. 194-7.

There is a blank page on the left of f. 247 front, where continuation text would normally be expected; the following text, f. 248, may be part of a different letter.

9
The text ends without valediction at the foot of the front of f. 248. List not found; no entry for receipt of such a consignment has been found in the Kew Inwards Books.

Please cite as “FVM-66-12-25d,” in Correspondence of Ferdinand von Mueller, edited by R.W. Home, Thomas A. Darragh, A.M. Lucas, Sara Maroske, D.M. Sinkora†, J.H. Voigt† and Monika Wells accessed on 27 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/vonmueller/letters/66-12-25d